The Shadow Queen (Ravenspire, #1)(76)
The heart of Ravenspire’s ground reached for her, tangling with her magic, but there was a taint to it. A streak of resistance that felt less like the ground and more like . . .
“Irina,” she whispered as the threads of her power reached a web of magic that waited beneath the fallow ground.
She’s already fighting you? Where? I don’t see anything.
She has a trap laid beneath the ground. That means this place is important to her. And it means her response is going to weaken her. She looked up into Kol’s amber eyes. And it means we’ll have to move fast, because the second I speak an incantor, her spell is going to react.
I’m ready.
“Pros`rashk!” Her voice rang with power, and magic exploded out of her palms and into the ground, wrapping around the weary heart of Ravenspire and merging until they were united. “Scatter the stones that built this road and crumble them into dust.”
For a moment, the ground resisted, the taint of Irina’s magic pushing against Lorelai’s. The princess’s heart raced, and anger fanned to life in her chest. She wasn’t losing this battle. She wasn’t going to back down. Irina had controlled Ravenspire’s ground for nearly a decade. It was time to sever those ties.
The princess threw her head back and yelled, “Pros`rashk!” Power flooded her body, a fire lit from the inside and poured into the ground.
The field shuddered and heaved. The stones that paved the road cracked and crumbled, scattering dust and bits of rock into the brittle grass. A ripple began beneath Lorelai’s hands and quickly sped along the roads leading east to west, leaving destruction in its wake.
Lorelai closed her eyes and pushed the magic, pushed the ground to go as far and as fast as possible. She needed the ruin to be widespread. She needed the capital isolated.
Power thrummed through her veins and roared in her ears, and then Kol had his arms around her waist and was hauling her to her feet.
Her eyes snapped open as he yelled, Get away from the road!
She stumbled back a step, and the ripple of destruction on the road disappeared into the distance. What are you doing? I wasn’t finished!
Listen.
Gabril said, “We need to leave. Now.”
She concentrated on hearing more than the thunder of her heartbeat, and nearly fell as the field twitched and bubbled like a pot of water left over a fire. Beneath the ground, something skittered and hissed, growing louder and louder until the grass trembled and cracks began splitting the land into pieces. The skittering and hissing poured out of the cracks, and Lorelai’s throat closed in horror as swarms of beetles, spiders, and centipedes gushed out of the ground and raced toward her.
“Get to the forest,” Lorelai said, and they ran south, leaping over cracks and crushing bugs beneath their boots.
They’d traveled half the distance between the ruined road and the forest when the ground in front of them disappeared, sinking out of sight and spewing a horde of insects the size of Lorelai’s hands with long pinchers that clacked and snapped as they crawled toward the princess.
Oh skies, we’re surrounded.
Lorelai whirled to find the ground behind them had disappeared as well. She stood with Kol and Gabril on a slender circle of dirt surrounded by swarms of spiders and beetles that chittered and clacked as they raced forward.
It was Irina’s favorite trick—dominating the hearts of multiple creatures so that there was no way Lorelai could overpower and subdue them all before being overcome.
Something crawled over Lorelai’s boot, and she shook her foot as Gabril cursed and began stomping the ground. Kol stomped as well, but for every bug they killed, another five took its place. Sasha screamed in fury and dove, but she couldn’t do more than sweep a few bugs away with the power of her wings, and more were already swarming to take their place.
A spider climbed over Lorelai’s boot and onto her leg, and she slapped at it, but her boots were already overrun with multilegged centipedes, spiders in every size, and those awful huge beetles who chopped other bugs in half as they advanced on the princess.
She needed something to fight with—the heart of a living creature capable of defeating an insect horde. She needed a stone to crush them. A flood of water to drown them. A ball of fire—
Use me. Kol’s hand wrapped around hers, and his dragon heart—vicious, powerful, and begging for blood—slammed against her magic and took hold.
Can you stay in control if we use your dragon heart? she asked, but she was already choosing her incantor as she used her free hand to shake off a centipede that was skittering over her bare arm. A sharp jab of pain pierced her heel as one of the monster beetles skewered her boot with its pinchers.
I’ll do my best. You can help me if I lose myself, but we’re going to be eaten alive or dragged into the depths of the ground if we don’t do something.
“Lorelai!” Gabril grabbed something off her back and threw it in the teeming mass that covered the field.
The ground beneath them heaved, sending them to their knees. Instantly, the bugs converged, swarming over them, biting, clawing and skittering over the top of each other until the three of them were covered.
Lorelai shuddered and lost her grip on Kol. Flinging her arms out, she swept at the creatures crawling toward her face and then fell forward as another wave of enormous beetles gushed from the ground and raced up her body.
Pain lit into her in tiny, jagged pieces as pinchers and fangs tore at her skin. Dimly, she heard Gabril cry out, but the whisper-hiss of hundreds of legs scrambling over the dirt, over her clothes, over her drowned out everything else.